Text | Musical precursor, author | Lu Xiuxiu, editor | Fan Zhihui
Streaming no longer seems to be a must for musicians.
On February 17, foreign top rapper Kanye West announced that the new album "Donda 2" will not be released on any streaming platform, but will be pre-installed exclusively on the player Stem Player. It is reported that the music player was released in August last year, jointly developed by Knaye's brand Yeezy Tech and computer hardware and software company Kano Computing, and is currently priced at $200.
Of course, Kanye's wave of bundling operations has also attracted the suspicion of "cutting leeks".
But this self-distribution experiment through music hardware also gives us a glimpse of the possibilities of musicians outside the current income distribution system. Driven by many other similar explorations, the industry system is quietly changing.
Kanye and his Stem Player
To promote Stem Player, Kanye has spared no effort.
In addition to building momentum for Stem Player on social media, Kanye also deeply tied the new album to Stem Player: not only did it release "Donda2" exclusively on Stem Player, but it also announced that the "Donda2" demo "The Donda Experience" held on February 22 at LoanDepot Park in Miami was also only broadcast on Stem Player's official website.
Kanye's wave of operations has indeed yielded good results. It is reported that Stem Player sold more than 11,000 pieces on the first day of release (February 17), with sales of $2.2 million. On the social networking site Discord, stem player's official forum has also attracted about 90,000 members to join.
In fact, this is not the first time Kanye has released a song on Stem Player. On August 29, 2021, Kanye West's tenth studio album, Donda, was a huge success, garnering nearly 100 million views on Spotify on its first day of launch and more than 775 million global streaming hits in its first week. On the occasion of the Donda fire, Kanye released Stem Player at the third audition and announced that the Remix version of Donda would be released exclusively on Stem Player.
On February 18, Kanye revealed on social platforms that stem player sales have exceeded $8.6 million so far thanks to the help of "Donda" and "Donda2".
The form of "binding" music works with playback equipment by top-stream singers has long existed in China. As early as 2005, Jay Chou cooperated with MP3 manufacturer ARIA to launch the global limited edition of J III MP3 limited crystal diamond version with a limited edition of 2000 units, and in J III MP3, there are three demo versions and 2 new songs that Jay Chou has never published. Each MP3 fuselage panel is inlaid with 65 diamonds, and the back panel also has Jay Chou's autograph.
Compared with the luxury revealed by MP3 more than a decade ago, Stem Player focuses on the sense of technology.
The music player was created by Knaye's label Yeezy Tech and music electronics company Kano Computing. According to Alex Klein, CEO of Kano Computing, Stem Player's shape was inspired by the Roden Crater Art Museum that artist James Turrell is building, and after absorbing suggestions from architects, musicians, engineers and others, it finally decided what Stem Player looks like now. In order to form a "sense of extension" outside the body, a soft silicone skin material is also used.
The best feature of Stem Player is the customized experience that Kanye promised, which is basically a mixing table that can be kept in your pocket.
Through the cross-shaped light bar on the surface of the player, the user can separate and manipulate the drums, vocals, basses, and samples of any song. At the same time, it also supports dynamic adding effects, changing pitch, looping (loop) and lossless audio mixing functions, which can easily mix songs and achieve a gamified interactive experience. It is reported that Stem Player storage space is only 8GB, support including AIFF, FLAC, MP3, WAV, AAC, ALAC, MP4 and other file formats.
It can be seen that Stem Player is not only a pocket-sized music player, but also a miniature version of the mixing software. Although Kanye bundled Stem Player with Donda2, thanks to the careful design and full sense of technology, Stem Player has also received good market feedback, and some users said, "This is the best first generation of technology product I have used since the iPhone."
Self-published experiments by the "Kanye Guys"
In recent months, questions about the music industry's income distribution system have sparked a new round of heated debate.
Last October, several major U.S. streaming platforms proposed "the lowest royalty rate in history," reigniting a tug-of-war with NMPA (National Association of Music Publishers). As the #BrokenRecord campaign, which protests unfair distribution of streaming revenue in the UK, is in full swing, British band The Pocket God has released an album called "1000×30-Nobody Makes Money Anymore", which contains 1,000 songs of 30-36 seconds (on Spotify, a song that plays more than 30 seconds is considered a complete "play"). To protest the extremely low royalty rate of music streaming.
When it comes to why he chose to release his own album through Stem Player, Kanye also pointed out the unfair distribution mechanism of the current streaming media platform. As he puts it, "Today artists get just 12% of the money the industry makes. It’s time to free music from the oppressive system. It's time to take control and build our own. It is time to liberate music from an oppressive system. It's time to take control and build our own products)".
It is estimated that Stem Player's $2.2 million in sales on its first day of launch is equivalent to royalties from 500 million streaming platforms. From this point of view, under the current streaming royalty system, Kanye's transition from a music platform to Stem Player seems to be a good attempt.
In fact, it is not just Kanye, more and more musicians are trying to "escape" music streaming.
Many musicians, including well-known DJ Steve Aoki and rapper Snoop Dogg, have made a lot of money in the new model of releasing albums through NFTs. In an interview with blockchain gaming platform Gala Games, Steve Aoki revealed that he made more money from NFTs than he had received upfront payments over the past decade.
Rapper Lil Pump and DJ KSHMR have experimented with a form of S-NFT (Securities NFT) fan funding — through blockchain financial platform Opulous and crowdfunding platform Republic, they sell their work to fans in the form of NFTs, and when these songs are played in scenes such as music streaming, investors can receive royalties. Last November, Lil Pump's single "Mona Lisa" reached a sales target of $500,000 in just two hours, selling to 927 fans.
A similar service has appeared on the NFT music platform Royal. Founded by electronic musician 3LAU, the platform allows musicians to profit not only from initial sales of song rights, show tickets, records, etc. in the form of LDA (digital assets), but Royal also opens up a secondary market to facilitate the trading of digital collections among users. On Royal, music LDA is both an investment asset and an art collection, and in the application of new technologies, allowing fans to participate in the career development of musicians, music is stimulated to have a double value.
However, it is not difficult to see that in the above combination of "NFT + music", NFT is nothing more than the value carrier or peripheral form of music. At present, music NFTs are more like the traffic of well-known artists, and have not shaken the current industry income distribution system.
In contrast, platform experiments with a certain scale are really providing new ideas outside the current distribution system of the industry. At present, the relevant exploration of music platforms focuses on two aspects, one is to challenge the highly centralized system of today's music industry through financing tools, and the other is to seek a more favorable streaming media distribution system for musicians.
This month, music financing platform BeatBread just received a $34 million investment, using the ChordCash technology engine, beatBread will "estimate" musicians based on their streaming, social data performance, and attract investors to fund musicians in the form of advance payments. In the future, musicians can choose to repay the advance payment by streaming revenue at any time.
For the upfront payment, beatBread interprets it as a payment for the purchase of a portion of the musician's income for a limited period of time. With an accurate valuation of intelligent algorithms built with billions of data points, beatBread both guarantees the returns of investors and preserves the copyright of musicians in the form of advance payments. Perhaps with the support of this advance payment, musicians who alleviate "worries" can also get better development in the process of performing, creating, and creating peripherals.
At the same time, there are also music streaming platforms that have made some new attempts in addition to the current mainstream traffic distribution model. Last year, Soundcloud and TIDAL respectively launched a user-centric royalties system, in which revenue from paying subscribers is distributed only to the musicians/record labels that subscribers have listened to that month.
According to a study by the Finnish Musicians' Union, about 10 percent of streaming royalty revenue currently flows to the top 0.4 percent of artists, while in the user-centric distribution model, only 5.6 percent goes to these star artists — small record labels and independent musicians — who will get more revenue.
It is not difficult to see that the new model of income distribution in the industry mentioned above is based on the fact that music has a certain value or musicians have a certain amount of traffic. BeatBread made it clear on its website that if musicians have fewer than 10,000 followers on Spotify, they are likely to not get an upfront payment. For Kanye's music streaming habits that challenge listeners, the extension of value outside of music requires the so-called "fanatical hardcore fans" to pay for it.
The problem doesn't stop there.
Whether it is the self-release of musicians, or some of the current "decentralized" platforms and copyright financing platforms, after leaving the context of music streaming, they have to face the problem of piracy.
After Kanye announced the exclusive release of the album on Stem Player, many fans said that they were "waiting for piracy". In addition, the new income distribution model is not yet mature, there are many technical and institutional defects, such as beatBread, with the expansion of the scale, the urgent need for timely intervention of external supervision, to avoid the formation of a platform "one word" to ensure the interests of musicians.
It can be seen that in the pursuit of a more equitable income distribution system, new problems brought about by new models are emerging one after another. Of course, in the constant trial and error, mature solutions will eventually be put on the table, but until then, the industry still has a long way to go.
epilogue
It's too early to talk about "escaping" music streaming.
On the one hand, listeners' streaming habits are deeply rooted, and for most musicians, they also rely on the relatively mature recommendation mechanism and audience group on the music platform. On the other hand, even in the past two years, many music scenes other than streaming have emerged, royalty settlement still adopts the idea of income distribution with the number of plays as the core - at present, most musicians are difficult to benefit from the development of new music scenes.
At least in the short term, the revenue distribution framework centered on the proportion of playback volume will not be broken, and the focus of the reasonable income problem of musicians will be the protracted royalty tug-of-war between musicians and streaming platforms.
Of course, this does not mean that the current challenge to the music industry's income distribution system does not help most ordinary musicians trapped in streaming.
As concepts such as "decentralization" become more and more popular, the monopoly position of streaming media platforms and record companies is being challenged, and they have to re-examine their value positioning and distribution plans in the industry. As Steve Aoki puts it, "the labels will have to do more than just add the song on a playlist."